Out here in the SF Bay Area it is a HUGE thing to take photos of your food. Except for the cheapest greasy spoons, I'm almost never in a restaurant where I don't see someone snapping photos with their cell phones. Since we go out a lot (3-4x/week) at all price levels, it is far from unusual. The more the meal costs, the more flashes are going off, every night. Taking food photos too often goes way beyond the "you two pose together so I can get a shot". People get up from their seats, walk around the table, not even noticing that they are in the way of the waitstaff. The tendency of most restaurateurs to cram in as many tables as possible doesn't help, either. Speaking as a customer, it is one thing to have a small cellphone flash go off. It is another thing entirely for someone to pull out a full-sized digital SLR and start taking flash pictures 2' away from you as you are trying to dine. Nothing like looking up at the wrong moment and getting a massive flash in your eyes as a stranger angles to get a shot of his 2" square of sea bass. Check the restaurant reviews on Yelp and you will find endless shots of food, often the same dishes, posted by various people. I have not yet seen the "stand on a chair" diner but I'm sure I will eventually! I don't mind low-key picture taking. I do it myself, and find it useful to see photos of food before deciding if I want to try a new place (of which there are thousands, where we live). But modern life shows us that there are too many people who go over the line and make it uncomfortable/unpleasant for others, and they simply don't care. If you as a restaurateur want to stop them, then you pretty much have to stop everyone from taking photos. When you get to the high-end restaurants, they don't usually have the same dishes anyway from week to week (sometimes day to day), so any photo is just a general representation of what the food will be like. In that case, a short slideshow on the restaurant's website more than suffices, and more restaurateurs should do that, IMHO.

My list of inventions that have impacted our lives: 1. Matches - This was a very useful item in its day. It was used to start a fire in stoves and camps. Before electricity, matches were used every day to light lamps and gas appliances. Other inventions followed such as the cigarette lighter, but these inventions were inspired by the match. 2. Radio - One early use for radio was to send morse code. Ships at sea adopted this invention as soon as there were working models available. The invention was improved and there followed AM (amplitude modulation) that could impress voice and music on radio emissions. FM (frequency modulation) followed to meet the desire to evade static that plagued AM. TV was an outgrowth of radio. The picture content was encoded as AM and the sound was FM. The development of RADAR followed and alongside radar was radio telescopes. A whole new industry to manufacture vacuum tubes sprang up that was needed to build electronic circuitry. The heyday of this industry was short lived between the years 1920 through 1960. Vacuum tubes were being replaces with transitors by 1960. 3. Transistors - see radio above. The appearance of the transistor was followed by micro-circuits grown on a silicon wafer, and there came the microprocessor and computers of all kinds. 4. Telegraph - The early days of railways were hazardous because there was no time standard. Time was kept by the conductor's watch and hopefully, neighboring conductors kept their watches synchronized with each other. It was too expensive and waste of material to build a double set of tracks over the long hauls. Railways had a great need to run their trains both diections over the same track and they had an even greater need to keep trains from colliding with each other. The answer was the telegraph. Depot clocks could be synchronized using the telegraph and then the conductors could adjust their watches to match the station's clocks. Railroads were an early user of the telegraph and that is why you see telegraph poles along side tracks in early photographs. Once a telegraph line was established, it could send messages as a side business. 5. Telephone - The telephone was an outgrowth from telegraphy and had far reaching useage. 6. Steam engines - The US industral revolution was kicked off with the availability of steam engines. Steam power was used to drive everything from boats to machines. The steam boat, for the first time, permitted travel upstream on major rivers. Before that, all shipping on a river was floated downstream and upstream goods had to go overland. The steam engine was followed by the internal combustion (IC) engine. IC engines for early farm use were modified steam engines. (Look at an early IC tractor engine and you will see its design rooted in a steam engine.) 7. IC engines - The steam engine was an unweidly affair and not well suited for small fields. Boiler explosions were a hazard. The IC engine was developed alongside steam power and soon took over. Before the IC engine and automobiles, large cities like New York had a big problem with its daily load of manure and urine from draft animals. Their streets were fillled with it. 8. Antibiotics and formal methods of drug development. 9. Immuzation against diseases.

I have just responded to Amy's post. And then, found this. I am really not complaining, it is a fact. I only received 10 blocks and a note from one at the time on my birthday. But, after 4 months (on the first)I do not expect to receive any more blocks. This was my first on line quilt group. Signups for the new year, took place before my birthday, so I do not know if I would have resigned or not.I am not the perfect quilter, but do try to get my projects there on time. I have misread the instructions but do try to follow procedure and get that block done and to them. So, I hope for all the groups out there, make everyone's birthday count.

I know this comment is very much after the fact but I would just like to offer Seattle and the greater Puget Sound area as a wonderful place to retire. I have lived here my entire life and while I have traveled extensively across the country, there is nowhere else I would consider living. First, the area is extremely scenic.......make that drop-dead gorgeous!! Anywhere you might choose to settle will provide views to mountains and natural areas and you are never more than a few miles away from water.........lots of water!! The Sound, many lakes and rivers and streams. Because of the geography (nothing here is really flat), view properties are plentiful. Any outdoor activity you are interested in - skiing and other winter sports, hiking, camping, hunting, boating, etc. - can be easily addressed without any extensive car travel. Second is the weather. Most who have never lived here have huge misconceptions about the weather. IMO, it is excellent. Never too hot, never too cold and contrary to common opinion, it does NOT rain here constantly!! In fact, total average annual rainfall in Seattle is much lower than many other places in the US. Summers are sunny and very dry........winters damp and cool and snow infrequent. Seldom a need for any A/C and no summer humidity. There are 4 distinct seasons and each offers its own attractions. And no strange weather issues that generate ferocious storms.......no hurricanes, no tornadoes and while we do exist on a major fault line, earthquakes are extremely rare. Seattle is a vibrant, active and very cosmopolitan city. Lots of cultural activities, a major sports center and a foodie paradise. Yes, it is expense to live in town but there are scores of smaller communities within easy access of the city that are far less expensive. I live across the Sound, just a quick ferry ride away from downtown Seattle but a world away in terms of a rural feel and reduced cost of living. Puget Sounders for the most part are extremely well educated, entrepreneurial, friendly, and polite and many have a very artistic bent with many smaller communities known for their support of the arts. In short, living in the Puget Sound/greater Seattle area will provide all the advantages of a big city (colleges, employment, superb medical care, museums, theatres, restaurants and shopping) combined with a very strong community feel of the smaller, more rural and very scenically located surrounding towns. What's not to like ??